


night shift

by iwillalwaysbelieve



Series: college aus??? how did this start [2]
Category: Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Grocery Store, Fluff, M/M, Panic Attacks, get u a freak like daniel tbh, i guess that's basically it, i haven't ever been the closer but this stuff has happened to me, it's a rough life as a cashier, supportive boyfriends, that's what i call it about myself anyway that's rough buddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 15:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11535162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillalwaysbelieve/pseuds/iwillalwaysbelieve
Summary: Honestly, Seongwoo could have passed on working the closing shift at the shitty little grocery store he cashiers at. But if it got him Kang Daniel, how bad can it really be?





	night shift

Seongwoo thinks he’s going to _die_.

He was on his feet all day for tech rehearsal, and then Minki called in sick for closing shift at the shitty little grocery store they work at, and Seongwoo was the unlucky bastard who got roped into covering. So here he is, feet aching, unable to sit because his manager is a fuckwad who gets to lounge in the back and check the front every twenty minutes, bored out of his _mind_ because nobody actually comes in after eight, a paper due in 24 hours that he can’t even work on because he’s on the clock.

He’s pretty sure the layout of the damn store is burned into his mind. He’ll be seeing fluorescent red and blue and green bags of chips in his dreams for the next week at this rate.

He shifts his weight to his other foot and bends his knee, trying to avoid hyperextending it, checks the clock, sighs. Three minutes since the last time he checked. The register has timed him out, but he’s not terribly worried about signing back in, with the clearly extremely crowded store in which the only sound is the pen he clicks obnoxiously if only to have _something_ to do.

He counts, does the math, sighs again: 103 minutes left in his shift. At least he’s almost under 100?

The pen drops with a clatter and he switches to drumming his fingers on the counter to the tune of his solo song in the musical, reaches up with his other hand to stab at the keypad and sign back in to the register, if only to have something to do. Not for the first time tonight, he wonders why he applied for this job at all, much less agreed to close. He _knows_ why, it’s just that he doesn’t like to admit it, not when his feet ache like this and he’s so bored he’s resorted to trying to count how many drinks are currently in the cooler he can see. A few girls came in about half an hour ago and all grabbed drinks; he could go pull the others forward, so he shoves his way out from behind the register and does so.

It’s while he’s kneeling there with his arm awkwardly extended into the cooler, face smushed against a row of Pepsi so he can reach the can of Monster in the _very_ back, that he sees a boy run through the seating area of the little Starbucks before skidding to a halt, probably realizing he shouldn’t be running in the store.

From here it is exceptionally clear that this boy (another student, based on the sweatshirt dripping from his frame) is attractive. Seongwoo is slightly in awe of his side profile and the way his caramel hair sweeps its way in front of his face, and when the boy ducks into an aisle Seongwoo is so stunned by the broadness of his shoulders that he loses his balance and his knee slides away from where it was holding the cooler door in place and said door slams into Seongwoo’s face.

He groans, straightens the last few cans, and returns to his register, tries to compose himself at least a little before the boy comes to check out. He’s back to tapping out the rhythm of his song on the counter when the boy shows up, and it’s just a little awkward when he looks up right as the bright university logo appears around the corner of another aisle and the boy heads through the open space in express to get to Seongwoo’s register, far enough that Seongwoo’s smile is getting a little embarrassed.

When he sees what the boy is holding, however, he laughs, inspecting the odd vegetable as he takes it and searches it in the hopes its PLU will be on a tag. There’s no number anywhere on the thing, which leaves Seongwoo at a loss, because he has _no idea_ what this weird cluster of green fractal-like pyramids bunched together is supposed to be.

“What…” he gestures helplessly, and the other boy laughs, and _fuck._

His eyes become crescents when he smiles, wrinkled delightfully at the corners, and like this Seongwoo can see the cutest bunny teeth he thinks he’s ever seen. It’s such a contrast to the look Seongwoo was very close to dubbing frat boy that he’s taken off-guard, but it’s cute and the boy’s laugh is adorable and there’s a reason Minhyun tries to keep Seongwoo away from cute people when he’s tired, because Seongwoo is an actor and therefore a hopeless romantic and he falls too hard too easily.

“It’s romanesco broccoli,” the boy says. The depth of his voice has cured Seongwoo’s depression. That’s a stupid metaphor considering Seongwoo isn’t even depressed, but it’s going to work.

Seongwoo is coming to the realization that this isn’t even a metaphor. He’s an actor, not a poet. While they may seem linked, he tries to stay as far away from those pretentious 20th century poets who used to do nothing but mope about how awful the world is becoming and got famous for it.

Seongwoo is also coming to the realization that he’s staring, so he blinks and the sound of the dumb 90s soft-rock filters back into his ears and he busies himself with the register, poking briskly at the screen to find the code for this weird broccoli in order to avoid the boy’s eyes. “And are you a member with us?”

It’s a routine question. There’s no need to make it weird, except that this could give him an excuse to get the boy’s number, but caramel hair is falling over crescent eyes as the boy turns to the pinpad to punch in his number.

There’s a moment of silence, and it’s awkward, and Seongwoo’s job is to not make it awkward, so he clears his throat. “What are you doing with romanesco broccoli at 11:47 in the evening?”

“My friend, Jaehwan, he’s in culinary and yelled at me fifteen minutes ago that he _had_ to have this for his pasta dish or _everything is ruined and so help me we’re not friends anymore, Kang Daniel_. So here I am, doing what any good friend does.”

Daniel. It suits him, somehow. “Do you want a bag for it? Keep the water from getting on your hands on the walk back to campus?”

“Nah. Jisung-hyung would flip his shit. Environmental science majors are batshit, I’ll tell you.”

Seongwoo raises an eyebrow as he totals the transaction and waits for the receipt to print. “You have some weird friends, man.”

“Tell me about it,” Daniel laughs, and Seongwoo does his best to keep from staring too much at the lines of his obviously strong shoulders and the flash of stomach he gets when Daniel lifts his sweatshirt to scratch absent-mindedly at his side. His best, this close to midnight, is not very good.

The receipt prints, an obnoxious noise this late in the night, and Seongwoo tears it off, tries to maneuver his hand so that their fingers will brush as he hands Daniel the receipt and the wet bag of weird broccoli, but it doesn’t quite work. “Have a nice night!”

With a grin and what might be a salute of sorts, Daniel starts to hurry out of the store, and Seongwoo settles in for—he does some quick math—73 minutes more of boredom.

“Seongwoo!” He whirls around, startled, to see Daniel nod to him. “Thanks for checking me out, man.” With that the strange boy is gone and Seongwoo is left frozen in shock, trying to figure out if he meant the business transaction or the other meaning.

 

He requests off work for show week, but he finishes the musical to standing ovations and gives himself two days of rest to try to heal the blisters on his feet from his jazz shoes and then decides he needs the money too much to wait anymore. Of course, his manager decides to live up to his reputation as Manager From Hell and saddles him with three more closing shifts in one week.

Honestly, some of the soft rock isn’t all that bad, so he sings when there’s a song he likes, obsessively straightens the candy on every single aisle, gets very well acquainted with the drinks in the far back of the freezers, and in other ways passes the time, but he’s still thinking of quitting.

That is of course, until Kang Daniel reappears. Seongwoo has spent the past week wondering if the other boy was a fever dream he had from being so bored, because no one _that_ attractive could go so unnoticed on campus. Jonghyun tries, to really no avail, to assure him that no, of course Daniel is real, I’ve seen him around the dance building a few times, he just runs a weird schedule, but Seongwoo isn’t totally convinced.

Until familiar caramel hair reappears in the store at a slightly more reasonable time. There’s nothing else to do, so Seongwoo thinks maybe he’s a little bit justified in turning around at his register to watch over the walls of the Starbucks stand as Daniel takes what looks like the rest of the edible doughnuts in the case and piles them carefully into a box. He laughs a little to himself when Daniel accepts that the box isn’t going to close without crushing the pastries and gives up.

They grin at each other when Daniel approaches the register, and he sets the box down on the belt but pauses. “I’m not quite done.”

Seongwoo contents himself with trying to count all of the doughnuts without touching any of them, and he gets to 26 before Daniel comes back, arms full of what is probably every single Monster in the coolers. Which is saying a lot considering there’s an entire cooler dedicated specifically to Monster. He can’t help but laugh, a little incredulously, and Daniel does the same, scratching at the back of his neck somewhat self-consciously once he drops all of the cans of energy drinks.

“There’s 36, by the way.” Seongwoo looks up, confused, to see Daniel gesturing to the box of pastries.

He doesn’t particularly want to try counting, so he accepts the number and types in the corresponding codes, sets the box carefully to the side before starting to ring up the Monsters. “So what’s all this for? I hope not Jaehwan again, wouldn’t want to see what kind of culinary project required this.”

Daniel laughs (he’s been doing that a lot tonight, and it’s _cute_ and Minki _warned_ him about this, but it’s too late for Seongwoo) and shakes his head. “Six people all pulling an all-nighter, and all of us get stupidly cranky when we’re exhausted. So if we want our friendship to survive the next twelve hours, this is what’s gonna do it.”

Seongwoo winces sympathetically when he sees the total of the transaction. “I sure hope they’re paying you back.”

“Yeah, actually I have cash— _f_ _uck_ , I _told_ Taewoong not to give me nine bucks in quarters and dimes, holy _shit_ hold on—” He scrambles, adorably, to set down what change he can before ducking out of sight to retrieve the coins that slipped from his fingers, and Seongwoo begins to count.

It takes a while, but they work it out together, catching each other on miscounts that neither one minds due to the late time, and finally Seongwoo is standing there with a weird assortment of crumpled bills and random coins, but it’s exact change, and he hits the right button with his elbow so the cash drawer can fly open (and hit him in the hip, somewhat painfully) and he can dump the coins into a random slot before sorting the bills.

Daniel is already loading his arms up with bags of energy drinks and balancing the doughnut box as the receipt prints; only then does he realize his mistake, and Seongwoo can _see_ when Daniel comes to the conclusion that he no longer has anywhere to accept the receipt.

“I can tuck it into one of the bags?” Seongwoo offers, clutching the thin piece of paper awkwardly.

Daniel shakes his head, leans over the belt carefully. “No time, I’ll lose it.” He opens his mouth, and Seongwoo knows what he wants but this is leaving him flustered, and as an actor Seongwoo prides himself on not getting flustered.

Minki will tell him later it’s a _sign_ or some bullshit like that, but right now all it does is make Seongwoo hesitant to actually reach out to Daniel. Somehow he’s felt safe before, with the register between them, a careful distance that Seongwoo doesn’t have to breach except with one hand, and he wears that distance like armor to guard the heart on his sleeve.

He’s getting into metaphors again; Minhyun always _said_ Seongwoo’s stupid crushes were bad influences on him.

This is getting awkward, and Daniel’s blinking at him, waiting. Seongwoo tells himself it’s only because he doesn’t want Daniel to drop all three dozen of his doughnuts and reaches out to hold the receipt just where Daniel can clamp his teeth around them.

“Try to get some sleep eventually, and try not to have a heart attack.”

He thinks there’s a “thank you” muttered around the paper and then Daniel’s disappearing from the store, and once again Seongwoo is left flustered, wondering if he actually had that experience.

 

Two days later and Daniel returns, once again, but Seongwoo doesn’t see him until he’s waiting to check out. It’s right around dinner time and the lines are crazy, all of the cashiers working as quickly as they possibly can, but it’s not fast enough for many of the grumpy customers. Seongwoo apologizes so many times he thinks the words lose meaning, biting his lip as an angry customer mutters something about “never coming back here again” before he turns to survey his line. There’s not really anyone he can call for backup, and his line _is_ moving faster than most, since he’s on express.

And then, through the crowds of disgruntled middle-aged housewives and elderly men only there for cigarettes or ice cream, he catches a flash of caramel hair and a little bit of the tension bleeds out of his shoulders, only to return when the forty-something woman with a terrible dye job snaps at him when her discounts don’t come off. The man behind her sighs loudly and shifts around to express his unhappiness as Seongwoo does his best to pacify her and manually enters the discounts, and he takes a breath while her receipt prints, musters as much cheerfulness as he can to say “have a nice day!” when she snatches up her bags.

Daniel has moved into Seongwoo’s line, and when Seongwoo looks he can see that Daniel is standing calmly, unfazed by the bustle and frustration around him. He smiles when he sees Seongwoo watching him, and Seongwoo does what he can to return the smile as he whips the middle-aged man’s raw meat into a bag and totals the transaction as quickly as he can. He’s thrown off, but slightly relieved, when the man barks out that he doesn’t need his receipt and storms out with his bag, and then it’s Daniel’s turn.

He pauses for just a second to sigh as he reaches for Daniel’s boxes of pasta, and Daniel offers an empathetic smile.

“Rough day?”

“The worst,” Seongwoo groans. “But I’m trying.”

“It’s not your fault, when they get mad at you.”

“I know. Doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when it’s me they’re taking it out on.”

“Take a minute and breathe. You’re doing fine, and it can’t be that much longer?”

“I get off at eight, actually. Two more hours of hell.” The cashier on the register next to him glances over and nods in agreement, and Seongwoo smiles wearily at her.

“Where’s your dorm?” Daniel asks.

“I’m not on campus, actually. I’ve got one of those little houses right next to it. Mulberry Street. Why?”

“Wondering if you had far to walk. If you did I’d leave my bike for you so you could get home sooner.”

“Nah, but thanks.”

He’s the most relaxed he’s been for an hour and a half, just chatting with Daniel, and he sighs when the pinpad dings for Daniel to remove his credit card. He’s not ready to go back to the Customers From the Black Lagoon, not so soon. But he gives Daniel a wave and sends him off with one last longing look at broad shoulders and ratty Converse, and turns back to the young woman who approaches him next.

Things slow down forty-five minutes later, and none of the other cashiers yell at him when he leans down onto the conveyor belt and buries his head in his arms for a moment, trying to work some of the stress out of his shoulders. He’s so tired he thinks he’s gonna cry if one more person yells at him for something he can’t control, and his throat is dry from constantly assuring people he’s trying to fix things, and his hands are dry, and his feet _ache_ almost more than days he works longer shifts.

A much kinder person than the manager, the head cashier seems to notice how exhausted he is and lets him off fifteen minutes early, with a smile and an order to get some rest. He clocks out and starts the trudge home to his small house with Minhyun, Jonghyun, Dongho, and Minki, already looking forward to the hot shower and then the massage Dongho always offers after dinner shifts.

As he gets to the corner of Mulberry, however, he sees a figure standing in the shadows, holding several things. When he approaches, he recognizes broad shoulders and a university sweatshirt, and then Daniel steps forward with a pizza box and a bottle of what Seongwoo is pretty sure is that really good buck-fifty lemonade.

“Did you wait for me?” His voice starts to die in the middle of even such a short sentence, and he coughs slightly at the end of it.

“You looked miserable earlier, so I was hoping I could help a bit.” Daniel offers the bottle, and Seongwoo snatches it up, cracks it open and peels away the seal and chugs it, hardly even stopping for breath.

It’s still cold, and the pizza smells fresh, and Seongwoo is suddenly _so thankful_ for Daniel, who realistically is still kind of a stranger. “You must be a riot at frat parties,” Daniel says, grinning, when Seongwoo lowers the now-empty bottle.

Seongwoo snorts, gestures to the pizza box. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“No, but I wanted to.”

With a sigh, Seongwoo relents. “Thanks, bro. But you bought it, and I couldn’t deprive you of food. You wanna come over and munch?”

“I’m sure you just wanna eat and get in bed—”

“It’s no problem. Come on, asshole, stop being so nice and come have some pizza and play Mario Kart with Minki and Dongho while I shower.”

Daniel shrugs. “If there’s Mario Kart…”

“Shut up.” Seongwoo leads the way to his house, shoves his way inside with Daniel in tow when he drops his keys and nametag on the kitchen table. “Minhyun, Minki, Dongho, Jonghyun, pizza!”

“You got us pizza?” Minki rockets into the kitchen in his socks and slides neatly to a stop by the door, then stumbles. “Who’s this?”

“This, um, this is Kang Daniel.”

Seongwoo busies himself with grabbing plates from the cabinets while his housemates introduce themselves, but Minhyun fixes him with a suspicious glare as they sit down to eat. Somewhere through the meal, as Daniel gets Seongwoo to laugh and joke despite his fatigue, the others slip away until it’s just the two of them staring at the last piece trying to figure out who gets it.

Finally Seongwoo shoves the box towards Daniel and lets his head fall into his arms. “I’m too tired to think about doing anything but sleeping. You take it.”

Daniel accepts it, but reaches out to run a hand through Seongwoo’s hair in a move that Seongwoo would find weird from anyone but his closest friends—and, somehow, Daniel. He still tenses slightly, lifts his head to frown questioningly at Daniel. The other, however, just grins.

“You’re cute when you’re tired.”

Seongwoo can’t even find the energy to be properly embarrassed anymore. “Thanks. You’re pretty cute all the time.”

“If you think so,” Daniel says, and then hesitates. He considers his next words, and then he rolls his shoulders back and _winks_. “You should come get dinner with me tomorrow. If you’re not working, that is.”

“Nah.” Seongwoo thinks he’s willing to fall asleep on this kitchen table, still in his polo and khakis, the smell of grease and cheese still too strong in his nose. “Day off tomorrow.”

“Six, then. I’ll meet you here.” A thumbs-up is the only reply Daniel’s gonna get, now that Seongwoo has decided he’s going to pass out in the next thirty seconds. “Go shower, dumbass.” Daniel’s tone is affectionate, as is the hand he runs through Seongwoo’s hair a second time. “It’ll feel better to sleep when you’re clean.”

Seongwoo musters a grunt of acceptance, and then he can hear Daniel rustling around by the front door before Minhyun comes back into the kitchen to forcibly drag Seongwoo to the shower he’s already got running.

 

It’s the meat.

It’s _always_ the meat. Seongwoo hates the raw stuff, scrubs his hands furiously with hand sanitizer after handling the particularly bloody packages.

But it’s a holiday, and he’s on express so he doesn’t have anyone bagging groceries for him, and he thinks that may be the largest hunk of meat he’s ever seen. The smell hits him a second later, and he tries to hide his desire to wrinkle his nose and turn away because he thinks it’s just the sweaty, pretty gross-looking man buying the meat. Holding his breath, he wrestles the meat into one bag, and then a second to be sure the bag doesn’t rip, and hurries his way through the rest of the transaction.

The stench— _awful_ body odor, he thinks, dissipates when the man takes his groceries and leaves, and he turns to the next customer with his usual bright smile. The whole encounter is two minutes, maybe three, and he doesn’t think much of it as he gets through the rest of his shift.

It’s once he walks outside—Daniel waiting by the doors, backpack slung across one shoulder—that he notices the problem. He’s reaching up to take his nametag, breathes in at the same time his hands near his face, and nearly gags.

“What’s wrong?” Daniel is concerned immediately.

“My hands.” Seongwoo’s disgusted, a vague sense of discomfort coiling in his stomach. “God, they smell like _meat_.” He tells Daniel the story as they walk, sniffing his hands once or twice to be sure that’s really what it is, and recoils every time from the odor emanating from his fingers.

“Go shower once we get to your place,” Daniel suggests. “That should help.”

Seongwoo nods and does as instructed once they get into the little house on Mulberry. They’re the only ones home, since Seongwoo’s housemates are working extended hours at the hospital with the new semester, so Seongwoo doesn’t hesitate to start shedding his clothes the second they’re in the door. It’s nothing Daniel hasn’t seen, after all, since that first dinner date went so well. He scrubs particularly hard at his hands under the hot water, presses his bodywash and shampoo into his skin, and relaxes.

For an hour, with the pair curled up on the floor in the living room doing homework with only the occasional comment, he’s fine.

And then he has to scratch his nose and he gets a whiff of that _smell_ and he flinches back. Daniel looks up immediately.

“You good?”

Seongwoo considers, but brushes it off. He doesn’t want to worry Daniel, not when Daniel’s got that dance evaluation at the end of the week.

“I’m fine.”

They go back to studying, but Seongwoo can’t help but check his hands every few minutes, and the twisting in his stomach is even stronger when the smell doesn’t go away. Finally he gets up, waits a minute or two under the guise of going to the bathroom, and washes his hands thoroughly with that scented soap Jonghyun likes after long days in latex gloves.

And again, for about an hour, his hands are fine. His anxiety isn’t, even when his hands seem normal when he smells them, and he’s starting to fidget and Daniel is starting to notice.

When they start looking at dinner options Daniel starts to ask if Seongwoo wants sushi but stops when Seongwoo winces immediately. They end up with microwave lasagne Minhyun had been saving for lunch and Seongwoo, in the small part of his mind not consumed by stress and the overwhelming desire to check and see if his hands smell like meat even though he knows they will, makes a note to buy his friend some replacement lasagne before Friday.

They start to eat, and Daniel’s chattering like normal but quickly realizes Seongwoo is oddly quiet. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

Seongwoo starts to nod, but changes his mind. He’s too upset by this to hide it anymore. “No.” He doesn’t trust his voice above a whisper; he’s pretty sure he’s about to start crying.

“What’s wrong?”

“My hands smell like _meat_.”

“Let me see.” Daniel reaches across the table and Seongwoo offers one of his hands, fingers slender compared to Daniel’s dancing-roughened ones. He watches nervously as Daniel raises their hands to his nose and inhales, and somehow the small shake of his head just makes the anxiety worse.

Seongwoo _knows_ this is psychosomatic. He’s washed his hands enough there’s no way the smell should still be there, even risked drying the skin by washing them with strong-smelling dish soap before they ate.

“They smell fine.” Daniel has so much _concern_ in his eyes, and Seongwoo hates it because he knows Daniel’s right, but he can’t accept it.

“No.” His voice is tiny. “They _smell like meat_ and it’s really distressing me.”

This is going to worry Daniel; for all Seongwoo is excessively open about his positive emotions, expressing every one in a way most people consider over-the-top, draping himself over Daniel whenever given the chance, he’s usually really closed off about anything negative, just because he’d feel even worse if he felt like he burdened anyone else with his worries. Dongho always says between Seongwoo and Jonghyun they’ve got enough hatred of sharing burdens and enough issues to fill an entire series of angsty young adult romance novels. Jonghyun always says to fuck off after that, and Jonghyun has gotten better about things since he realized he could open up to Minhyun, but Seongwoo is still awful about it.

Daniel stands, suddenly, and Seongwoo looks up at him in surprise, doing his best to hold off the lump in his throat. “Come here.”

He leads Seongwoo to where a sprig of rosemary is sitting in a cup of water, an ingredient for the dinner Minhyun plans to make on his day off. “Rub this on your hands.”

Seongwoo bends over the trashcan, presses the needles into his hand, and scrubs until his skin is starting to turn red. This may have been a bad idea, because he’s getting frantic now, trying desperately not to cry even as he can’t stop rubbing the rosemary over his fingers even when his skin starts to protest and sting. Daniel must realize this, because he pulls Seongwoo away, takes the rosemary away from him, doesn’t even blink when tears start to fall.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

“But it doesn’t feel like it.” Seongwoo’s voice breaks, and he _hates this he hates it_ but it won’t _stop_.

Lacing their hands together, Daniel tugs him away from the kitchen, towards the room Dongho and Minki share. “Would Minki-hyung’s essential oils help?” They perch on the edge of Minki’s bed and Daniel inspects the tiny bottles. “There’s pine and lavender. Which do you want?”

Wordlessly, Seongwoo takes the pine and holds it in trembling hands until it’s all he can smell. Daniel reaches behind the headboard until he finds he finds what he was looking for; the bag of Sour Patch is quickly opened and Daniel starts digging through the candy. “What flavor do you want?” Seongwoo just blinks at him. “Blue? Yellow? Green?”

“Blue or green.” Seongwoo can only find it in himself to whisper, but Daniel doesn’t hesitate to start looking for those flavors, popping a red candy into his mouth as he does. Seongwoo’s drawn his knees up to his chest at some point, still clutching the bottle of essential oil, and Daniel places a green candy on Seongwoo’s knee carefully.

They eat in silence for a minute and Seongwoo’s starting to relax a little, enough that he’s eating more than he’s smelling the little bottle.

“Any more?” Daniel doesn’t have the highest tolerance for sour candy, and Seongwoo is also starting to tire of the taste, so he shakes his head. “Alright then. I’ll explain this to Minki-hyung when they get home. Wanna go watch a movie?”

Seongwoo nods, so Daniel pulls them up from the bed, take the pine oil and puts it back on Minki’s dresser before leading Seongwoo to the living room. They nestle onto the couch and Seongwoo tucks himself as close to Daniel as he can as Daniel searches through the selections.

As the title sequence for some classic comedy girl-power thing starts Daniel lifts Seongwoo’s hand again, traces his thumb in circles over the moles near Seongwoo’s wrist, and then smells his fingers again. “You’re fine. Just soap.”

It’s a good thing this movie has credits at the start, because Seongwoo is thoroughly distracted by Daniel pressing feather-light kisses to each of Seongwoo’s fingers.

“You’re okay. You know me, I wouldn’t do that if your hands still actually smelled like shit.” It’s blunt, but it’s true, and Daniel’s soft tone is making Seongwoo want to cry again. Instead he shoves Daniel’s shoulder but snuggles closer, refuses to let go of his boyfriend’s hand.

“Shut up, we’re going to miss the start.”

They get lost in a delightful comedy, and Seongwoo’s the first to fall asleep, exhausted from work and his stress, but Daniel is a close second.

Jonghyun is the first to see them when Seongwoo’s housemates come in, and he shuts off the movie. Minhyun takes it upon himself to clean up the dishes as quietly as he can, Dongho drapes a blanket over the two, and Minki comes out of his room with the essential oil bottle in his hands and his eyes wide and they all piece together what happened from the tear tracks on Seongwoo’s face and the way he’s pressed into Daniel, and they resolve to make sure Daniel knows just how thankful they are that their best friend has someone as supportive as him.

Daniel and Seongwoo don’t really speak about it in the morning, but Seongwoo murmurs a quiet “thank you” to Daniel’s lips when they kiss goodbye before Daniel’s eight a.m. class and if Daniel makes sure almost to never let go of Seongwoo’s hands when they’re together after that, pressing kisses to slender fingers, memorizing the patterns of freckles that litter the back of them, well, it’s just affection, and there’s plenty of that to go around in this relationship.

**Author's Note:**

> um. yeah. this is a thing that exists. it's mostly based on unfortunately true experiences that have happened to me, although my managers are generally great and i haven't actually worked closing shift since i'm young and not a head cashier. thank god for that. no doughnut/energy drink run either, but i've had some incredibly slow shifts that have left me with nothing to do, and i really do count down the minutes until i leave. wish i had me a kang daniel to be a sweetheart when i feel gross, but alas.


End file.
